


Daddy's Girl

by hrhrionastar



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith Rahl is not the daughter Kahlan wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daddy's Girl

Her name was Faith because she was a promise kept. Her birth marked the fulfillment of Kahlan's deal with Darken Rahl: amnesty for the Resistance in exchange for a Confessor heir. Now he could kill her with impunity, although it was doubtful Kahlan went that far in her thoughts.  
  
She waited for it. But incredibly, Rahl let her live. He made no attempt to limit her time spent with Faith, and the problem from Kahlan's point of view was that he expected similar forbearance from her.  
  
Faith was a promise kept to Richard, too. She was the only hope the future had. She _must not_ be corrupted.  
  
But while Kahlan watched her husband she failed to watch her people. The summer before Faith turned five, plague swept the countryside, and Rahl raised taxes to pay for the labor shortage. One night a group of angry villagers stole into the People's Palace, how no one knew, and stole away again with the baby princess.  
  
Kahlan was afraid for Faith, but what she remembered most about that desperate time was not terror but fury. It was so _stupid_! If only the Midlands would keep quiet and just _wait_ , they would have their justice in the end. Without the Seeker, what purpose could rebellion serve? It would fail, and even if it succeeded, it would be a hollow victory.  
  
Rahl scoured the land for the princess, but it was neither his quads of grim soldiers nor his teams of grimmer Mord'Sith that found her. Faith walked into the People's Palace under her own power, although her whole rake-thin body shook with exhaustion and she held onto the hand of an angry villager-turned-kidnapper so hard her knuckles were white.  
  
Faith saw Darken Rahl and ran to him. She hugged his leg. He walked forward, at a pace slower than his customary stride.  
  
"It appears that I must thank you," Rahl said to the man whose hand Faith had held, making it plain that to proffer thanks to anyone was against his will. "You have restored a great treasure to me."  
  
 _Is that all she is to you?_ Kahlan wanted to shout. _A treasure, like rubies or gold? Something for your trophy room?_  
  
"I do as my mistress wishes," the hand-holder said earnestly. There were nods of agreement behind him, and an echoing whisper went through his companions: "mistress wishes."  
  
Rahl stared at the head kidnapper for a moment. Then he beckoned to the soldiers ornamenting the walls. Only when the whole group was surrounded did Rahl take his eyes from their leader.  
  
He finally acknowledged Faith, who looked half-starved and wholly desperate. He lifted her up to rest against his shoulder, and she buried her face against his neck and cried.  
  
"Faith," Rahl said, and with just that one word he soothed her sobs and she quieted. "Are these the bad men who took you? Did you confess them all?"  
  
Faith gulped, and nodded.  
  
Rahl cuddled her closer, one hand under her chin so he could look into her wide blue eyes. "That's my girl," he said, and the gentleness in his tyrant's voice was shocking.  
  
He kissed Faith's forehead. Kahlan covered her mouth with her hand.  


* * *

  
"'That's my girl,' he said." Kahlan couldn't let those three words go. "And he was right. Even when she was a baby, she stopped crying when _he_ held her! She's his, she's not mine. She's not ours, Richard, and oh, I did so want her to be!"  
  
Kahlan had begun talking aloud to Richard in the endless months before she felt herself to be with child—that agonizing half-year after her marriage when she had feared she was barren and there would be no Confessor for the future. It was a bad habit, Kahlan knew that. But sometimes talking to Richard was the only way she could survive another day here.  
  
"Faith is so young and she's still so tiny," Kahlan said, pretending the empty air above her nightstand was the lover she'd lost. "She confessed them all. She confessed them _all_."  
  
The nightstand offered no reply.  


* * *

  
Faith had blue eyes, which was like both Rahl and Kahlan. She had freckles, which were Kahlan's, and a sharp little blade of a nose, which was Darken Rahl's, and orange hair, which was neither of them. The hair was actually orange, not red and not blond, and it curled alarmingly.  
  
Kahlan had never seen it straight, and she and her maid Alice had tried everything, so perhaps it was not surprising that the first thing she noticed the day Faith came to her sitting room with bent head and dripping wet skirts was the hair. Water, and what looked like half the mud of the lake, had pulled it down out of its ferocious curls and actually made it look a respectable mahogany instead of outrageous orange.  
  
The second thing Kahlan noticed was that Faith's feet were bare, and the reason they were bare, she learned after patient questioning, was that Faith had lost her shoes in the lake. The reason she'd jumped into the lake fully clothed on a late autumn morning was to save the copy of [Words of Wisdom: Tales for Young Confessors](http://confessors.livejournal.com/177706.html) that Kahlan had given her for her eighth birthday last week. The reason _Words of Wisdom_ had been in the lake in the first place was…more obscure.  
  
Kahlan accepted the sopping wet book from Faith's blue and wrinkled fingers and sent her away to dry off and go to bed without any supper so she'd learn to treat gifts more responsibly.  
  
The next morning Faith had a fever. The next evening Rahl stormed into Kahlan's sitting room, tore the already-ruined _Words of Wisdom_ 's soaked pages into soggy fragments, and called Kahlan a bad mother. The next _next_ morning, Faith told them both why her book had been in the middle of the lake.  
  
"Sophie Egremont hates me," said Faith. "She calls me mean names and she says everyone knows I'll be the ruin of D'Hara."  
  
"So why haven't you confessed her?" asked Kahlan.  
  
"Mother!" said Faith, in a tone that made it clear she'd thought of doing precisely that.  
  
"I'll deal with this," Rahl announced. Screams of agony and rivers of blood would have been less horrifying than his face in that moment.  
  
"No!" Kahlan and Faith shouted together.  
  
Faith gasped and coughed; Kahlan pulled her halfway to a sitting position and reached blindly for the water glass on the table. Her fingers brushed Rahl's as he handed it to her, and she shivered.  
  
"This is my problem," said Faith, when she could talk again. "I'll deal with it."  
  
Somewhat to Kahlan's surprise, Rahl accepted this. He launched into a nostalgic monologue about his own childhood, training with the Dragon Corps, and the larger and older Demmin Nass. Apparently Nass had taken every opportunity to show up the weakling prince, and Kahlan could only assume that Rahl revealed his past vulnerability in order to contrast it with his present success—or perhaps, she thought bitterly, he had forgotten she was in the room, so intent was he upon Faith.  
  
Rahl gave Faith tips on humiliating Sophie Egremont, all very tame, or at least tamer than confessing her would be. Kahlan had only said that to test Faith. She found Rahl's suggestions more disturbing because she could easily imagine Faith taking them—or Rahl taking them on her behalf.  
  
"Did Demmin Nass leave you alone after you made his sword stick like molasses in the stone so he couldn't get it out and everyone laughed?" asked Faith eagerly.  
  
"No," said Rahl. "Better than that. He became one of my bravest and most loyal allies."  
  
"A friend?" Now Faith sounded doubtful. Sophie Egremont would never be a friend to her.  
  
"Yes," said Rahl, after a pause. "But he died some years ago, during the war."  
  
That was when he met Kahlan's eyes, and she knew he had never forgotten her presence. Kahlan had confessed Demmin Nass, a lifetime ago when she still fought at the side of the Seeker.  
  
She certainly didn't regret it, but she hated the constraint of Faith's presence. Rahl knew she could say none of the vicious invective that hovered on her lips in front of Faith. He opened fire only when he could be sure she wouldn't answer back.  
  
 _Coward_ , Kahlan thought. But how did that match the young prince who'd tricked Demmin Nass into giving him his total allegiance? Rahl had charm, there was no escaping it.  
  
Kahlan looked at Faith, who was still pale under her freckles, and wished she had charm. Wished she could tell Faith pretty stories of past victories.  
  
But those tales turned to ash on Kahlan's lips. Those tales most of all.  


* * *

  
"Faith WHAT?"  
  
Alice, the queen's maid, trembled before Kahlan's fury. She was such a weak little thing—Kahlan could drive her speechless with terror with no more than a cruel word. But Alice was all Kahlan had, and the Mother Confessor had sworn to herself back before she'd carried Faith that she would turn Alice into a weapon worthy of her cause.  
  
"Sh-she's out in the practice f-field," stuttered Alice. "She's got a sword and she's p-promised to fight anyone and ev-everyone!"  
  
Kahlan found the statement no more comprehensible upon second rendition, although that might have been because Alice got incoherent when she was frightened. Kahlan swept from the room, her skirts actually billowing outward to slap against the doorframe, to find out the truth for herself.  
  
Faith held the sword in both hands. Her orange hair streaked out like flames. The sword was ridiculously too long for her, and Kahlan was amazed that she could lift it at all. As Kahlan watched, Faith tossed her hair back and said, in a perfect imitation of Rahl's voice telling her an old tale,

  
"Do none dare answer my challenge?"  
  
Someone dared—one of Rahl's lesser generals—but he looked as if he were trying not to laugh. Kahlan watched long enough to know he was going to let Faith win, and then left in disgust.  
  
Faith hadn't noticed her in all the time she stood under a tree at the edge of the practice field, and Kahlan was grateful. Faith was ten now, too old to be told, 'stop that! Because I said so!' especially in front of a crowd of men she might one day command. And truthfully, Kahlan didn't know what else she could do.  
  
The Mother Confessor and the princess of D'Hara had nothing to say to one another, and the fact that they were mother and daughter couldn't change that.  
  
So Kahlan went to Rahl, but all he said was, "Let her be. They won't hurt her."  
  
Kahlan wondered if he'd still say let her be if he knew just what sword Faith was using. She'd caught a good look at the hilt—Faith's hands were small and thin like the rest of her, and her fingers hadn't covered everything—and seen the word 'Truth' etched into the metal. Creator only knew where Faith had found the thing.  
  
It occurred to Kahlan much later that she should have been struck to the heart at the sight of that sword. But it was only a tool, when all was said and done. Kahlan Amnell, Seeker's Confessor, had far more to weep over than a mere sword.  


* * *

  
Faith issued her challenge every morning for a week. Many took her up on it. On the seventh day, a young and blond D'Haran officer, Captain Heron, agreed to fight Faith. He was the first person not to let her win. He beat her handily, inside half a candlemark.  
  
Captain Heron had Faith disarmed and on the ground, his own sword leveled at her neck (although not too close: she was the princess, after all). He stepped back and sheathed his sword. Then he offered her a hand up.  
  
"Good fight," said Captain Heron.  
  
Faith worshipped him from that moment.  


* * *

  
Captain Heron was what decided Kahlan to have another child.  
  
He was blond and beautiful, and not so much older than Faith. And he was yet another Egremont grandchild, so Rahl would doubtless be delighted to 'welcome him to the family.' A man with a Confessor daughter had little to fear from an overly ambitious son-in-law. And for General Egremont's grandson, Rahl might even consent to bind Faith's powers with a Rada'Han so Captain Heron could retain his free will, although Kahlan vowed that would be over her dead body.  
  
Faith was still a child. She would get over her worship of Captain Heron.  
  
 _Oh, yes?_ said Kahlan's inner Mother Confessor. _The way you 'got over' the Seeker?_  
  
Kahlan had heard countless tales of Seekers past in Aydindril. She remembered Kieran in Richard's body, that time in the tomb when they'd almost…She had made a hero of the Seeker in her girlhood, and—miraculously—her dreams had fallen short of the truth. Richard had been all Kahlan could have hoped for and more.  
  
And now he was lost forever.  
  
Unless she made the ultimate sacrifice. Unless she gave her life to the quest. Unless she gave her body, her honor, her child, her world.  
  
Faith was not hers. Not Kahlan's in spirit. In heart.  
  
 _And you think it will be different with a second child?_ sneered the inner Confessor. Kahlan ignored her.  
  
She had been prepared to justify herself to Rahl, but he did not question her return to his bed. He didn't even gloat over it, surprising Kahlan a little. There had been nights they'd shared a bed since Faith's birth, but in the morning Kahlan would always swear it was the last time.  
  
This pregnancy was harder than Kahlan’s first. She felt sick often, and then there were days when nothing pleased her, and she struck out, using the poison in her heart and the cruelty of her tongue as weapons against all who dared trespass upon her solitude.  
  
Perhaps not surprisingly, Alice bore the brunt of Kahlan’s attacks. She was just so _weak_. And Alice always tried to pacify her mistress, all meek and terrified, and that made Kahlan worse.  
  
Rahl gave as good as he got; he was no stranger to pain and cruelty. Their battles could go from verbal to physical in seconds, and melt from violence to lust even faster.  
  
Faith was the only other person Kahlan saw regularly—even General Egremont and the Mord’Sith had taken to turning around and striding briskly up a cross-corridor when they saw their queen coming.  
  
Not Faith. Kahlan didn’t permit her daughter to visit on her worst days, but when Faith did come, she sang. She made up nonsense words and sang them to Kahlan’s growing belly, and she sang to Kahlan, too. Faith’s strong young voice had the power to banish Kahlan’s bitterest vitriol.  
  
Faith even drew Kahlan a picture of their family. Four stick figures, one in a red dress and one in red robes (difficult to distinguish from one another; Kahlan only recognized herself by the silver of her Rada’Han) and two shorter figures, one a mass of outrageous orange crayon and the other covered in yellow circles, apparently meant as neat blond ringlets.  
  
It touched Kahlan that Faith wanted her little sister to have proper hair. Blond ringlets—that showed Faith’s generous heart. How often had Kahlan longed for hair like her own sister Dennee’s, when she was still young enough to cherish such ludicrous vanities!  
  
Never before had Kahlan felt so close to her daughter as during her second pregnancy. Later, she swore to herself that she should have known it was too good to last.  


* * *

  
“Faith, I have someone for you to meet.” The smug tones of Darken Rahl penetrated the sluggish miasma Kahlan felt, like fog clinging to her skin. “Your baby brother. Nicholas.”  
  
Horror lanced through the veil surrounding Kahlan’s mind. She fought her way upward, out of unconsciousness and also to a sitting position in bed. Her eyes opened.  
  
Darken Rahl perched at the foot of the bed. Behind and around him, maids scurried to clean up the mess left by the birth. They might have been moths, for all the notice that Rahl paid them. In his arms was a bundle, wrapped snugly in white linen. Faith stood before him. Her eyes were fixed on the bundle. She was smiling.  
  
The sight of that smile made Kahlan’s heart plummet. She had thought that giving birth to a boy was the worst evil that could befall her. Now she knew better.  
  
Because Faith smiled. She held out her finger, and a small fist emerged from the bundle to clutch it.  
  
And Kahlan knew that the tiny life that she and Rahl had created and that now she must snuff out—her son’s life—already had love.  
  
Faith loved her little brother.  
  
She and Rahl continued to exclaim over the baby: his tiny limbs and big blue eyes already closing in sleep, his few strands of Rahl blond hair, his tenacious grip. Faith and her father agreed: Nicholas was perfect.  
  
Kahlan despaired.  


* * *

  
It was two weeks later. Kahlan and Alice were in the queen’s chambers, and Kahlan was haranguing her handmaiden.  
  
“—as soon as they find the body, Rahl will know it was me. It’s up to you now, Alice. To stay alive, and tell Faith what she must do to help the Seeker. Tell her, Alice. Tell her how blessed she is, to be born for such a purpose. That even though her mother could not stay in this world to protect her any longer, she has faith that her daughter will do what’s right. Tell her…Tell her I love her.”  
  
Alice did not say, _Tell her yourself_ , or even, _What’s your hurry? The prince is two weeks old, you still have time to protect Faith, teach her, train her to help the Seeker. You’ve had eleven years, in fact. Why haven’t you told her already?_ Kahlan hadn’t really expected her to.  
  
All Alice did was hand Kahlan a handkerchief-wrapped packet. She couldn’t even speak through her tears, so Kahlan did not have to listen to another plea to consider her own safety, as if anything in the world were less important than Kahlan’s life.  
  
She pressed Alice’s hands between hers. She pressed hard enough to make the other woman remember the importance of their quest—or so Kahlan hoped. She wanted it imprinted on Alice’s palms and over her knuckles. She wanted it to _sink in._  
  
Because after tonight, D’Hara would have no queen. But Kahlan swore on the Creator that the Midlands (the Seeker) would still have a Confessor.  


* * *

  
Faith stood in the doorway of the nursery. A yellow duck balanced on her open palms. She stared into the shadows at the crib, where it stood by the window, and squinted.  
  
“Mama?” Faith called, toward that darkness.  
  
“Shhh,” said Kahlan, one white finger going to her lips. “The baby’s sleeping.” Then she laughed. It was a sharp sound, that laugh. Sharp enough to make Faith’s ears bleed.  
  
Faith dropped the duck onto the carpet and took two hesitant steps forward. The duck rolled away under a chair.  
  
“Mother, what have you done?” asked Faith.  
  
She still sounded uncertain, and Kahlan remembered that her copy of _Words of Wisdom: Tales for Young Confessors_ had drowned in the moat. The thought that even the _book_ of the Confessors had drowned struck Kahlan as hysterically funny, just now, and she laughed again. Faith flinched.  
  
“Don’t worry,” said Kahlan, stepping back toward the window. Faith was drawn into another corresponding step forward to the crib. “You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you.”  
  
“Nicholas?” Faith asked, and then she leaned into the crib at last and saw, and screamed, “Nicholas!”  
  
“He’s safe too,” Kahlan promised, trying to soothe the pain she sensed from Faith. “He is in a better place. I made sure of it.”  
  
Footsteps sounded, outside. Kahlan faded to the alcove formed by the window and drew the curtains across it, all by her warrior’s instinct. She no longer fought with two throwing daggers and one open palm on an enemy neck, but she fought still.  
  
Faith had picked up the baby. Now she turned toward the door with Nicholas in her arms, and Darken Rahl froze on the threshold.  
  
Kahlan could not see his expression from the slight gap between the curtains that was her only window, but she heard the defeat in his voice when he spoke, and for a single moment she rejoiced to hear his world crumple as surely as hers had done.  
  
Rahl only said one word:  
  
“Faith…?”  


* * *

  
Hours passed. The sun rose above the People’s Palace as serenely as it did every morning, entirely oblivious to the turmoil within.  
  
Kahlan opened her eyes. She didn’t remember returning to her own bedchamber last night, but she must have, because the gauzy canopy above her was too red for the Underworld.  
  
Rahl red. It was deep and dark and possibly meant to seem rich, but for Kahlan it would always be the color of blood.  
  
“And you have surely completed your coronation now,” she told herself. “Lady _Rahl_.” As always, her lips twisted into a sneer when she spoke the name of her most hated enemy.  
  
After all these years. Still. Always.  
  
Kahlan shivered as she got out of bed and rang the bell for Alice to come help her dress.  
  
When the maid still hadn’t appeared after half an hour, Kahlan decided not to wait any longer. She yanked a brush vigorously through her hair and pulled it back off her neck, securing it with several pins that she jabbed into her scalp. Then she wrestled herself into corset and gown, a high-necked outfit that almost entirely hid her Rada’Han. Pausing only to shove her feet into slippers and rubies into her ears, Kahlan strode to the curtain that shielded her bedchamber from the outer room and pulled.  
  
Darken Rahl stood on the other side of the curtain.  
  
“You!” Rahl roared. He grabbed Kahlan by her upper arms and shook her, hard enough that some hairpins were jostled loose to land on the floor with hollow tings.  
  
“What did you say to Faith? Did you repeat that vile fantasy of yours, that I only wanted a son? When your sister gave birth to a boy my soldiers tried to save him, yes, but I would have done the same for a girl, or any soul left in the hands of your despicable Sisterhood!”  
  
Rahl paused to draw breath, and to throw Kahlan away from him, as if he were now as eager to be rid of her, as he had been mere seconds before to get his hands on her.  
  
“ _I_?” Kahlan exclaimed. “It was _you_ who coveted my power, always! You captured Aydindril, you tried to steal my powers with the Shakai’ah, you _killed my sister_! And then at long last you tricked me into agreeing to this—this travesty of a marriage, all so you could raise a Confessor to love you, so you could turn her heart against me and use her as a pawn in your petty schemes! Who is despicable, Darken Rahl?”  
  
Kahlan stood panting, her chest rising and falling as her heart pumped pure rage. Rahl, across from her, was still, but it was a hunter’s stillness, like a gar about to spring. His voice went soft. It was clear that he held onto to his control by a hairsbreadth.  
  
“You are,” said Darken Rahl. “Turn Faith’s heart against you? I have defended you! Do you have any idea how many times our daughter has come to me crying, because she fears she is not good enough for you, Kahlan? Do you?” He stepped closer. “Can you imagine the pain of a childhood spent struggling for just one crumb of approval? One sign that you are loved?”  
  
He waited. When Kahlan didn’t speak, Rahl took her chin between two fingers and looked down at her in disgust. “No,” he said, “I suppose you can’t.”  
  
“Did you come here to insult me?” Kahlan managed. Her eyes felt hot, and even she wasn’t sure if it was with the suppressed power of Con Dar or with unshed tears.  
  
“I came because Faith is missing,” said Rahl. “As the one person who has done more than anyone else to convince her that I am a monster who would cast my daughter aside as soon as I had the male heir I craved, I thought you might know where she is.”  
  
Inwardly aghast at Rahl’s matter-of-fact summary of her own sporadic attempts to educate Faith in the truth of the world as she knew it, Kahlan could only shake her head.  
  
Rahl released her chin, and seemed on the point of departure when once more the curtain was wrenched back. Faith and Alice stood there, on either side of Captain Heron.  
  
“She tried to sneak out the back way, my lord,” Captain Heron reported.  
  
Faith pulled away from Alice and the captain, and as she did so Kahlan saw finger-shaped bruises on her arms. Kahlan darted a quick glance at Alice, who flushed bright red and was foiled from sneaking back out into the corridor by Captain Heron, who pushed her into the room.  
  
“Faith,” said Rahl. “Faith, it’s all right. You don’t have to run away. I forgive you.”  
  
Both Kahlan and her daughter stared at him with identical expressions of shock. Then several of Rahl’s accusations resurfaced in Kahlan’s thoughts, and she had to reach out to catch herself on the candle niche in the wall as the implication made her dizzy.  
  
Rahl believed that _Faith_ had killed Nicholas.  
  
How, how could even Darken Rahl think such a thing? Faith was good, her heart was pure, she was a real Confessor and better. It was true, she was _not_ the daughter Kahlan deserved, but not because she had been corrupted, or because she might choose Captain Heron over saving the Seeker.  
  
Faith had protected Sophie Egremont from Rahl, a girl she hated. She had dove for the _Words of Wisdom_ book just because it was a gift from her mother. She had loved Nicholas.  
  
Faith was _better_ than Kahlan deserved.  
  
And Nicholas would have taken that love and used it as a shield for his wickedness, until it was too late. He would have destroyed Faith’s love.  
  
He would have destroyed Faith.  
  
“I did it for you,” whispered Kahlan.  
  
Faith just looked at her, from under that wild and ridiculous orange hair. Kahlan tried, but not all her Confessor power could breach the walls behind Faith’s eyes.  
  
After that, everything happened very fast.  
  
“My lord,” said General Egremont, somehow also appearing and rendering Kahlan’s bedchamber quite crowded. He held a small glass bottle and a gnarled-looking vegetable out to Rahl. “These were found in the prince’s crib.”  
  
“Dar oil and kreeg root,” Rahl hissed. “So it was _you_!” And he whirled to Kahlan, striking her hard enough to send her to her knees.  
  
Kahlan barely felt the blow; her mind and her body seemed finally to have achieved the separation she’d longed for, all those nights in Darken Rahl’s bed.  
  
She watched through a numb haze as Captain Heron inched back toward the curtain, as if eager to leave this scene. Kahlan couldn’t blame him.  
  
Rahl looked down at her bleeding lip and then across to their watching daughter. A dagger appeared in his hand, but from where she still knelt on the floor Kahlan couldn’t see if it had come from a hidden pocket in his robes or been yanked from a sheath on Captain Heron’s belt.  
  
Rahl strode to Alice, who now stood too frightened to stay and by far too terrified to move. One flash of the dagger and Rahl slit her throat.  
  
Kahlan screamed, as if her handmaiden’s death cry were being squeezed from her own lungs.  
  
But the murder seemed to calm Rahl. His cruel face was nearly impassive when he gestured to General Egremont and Captain Heron to pick up Kahlan from the floor.  
  
“As the mother of my children, however _despicable_ you’ve proven yourself,” here Rahl sneered, his word choice recalling their earlier quarrel, “I shall grant you a merciful death. Egremont, take her to the block.”  
  
General Egremont nodded gravely. On Kahlan’s other side, Captain Heron looked a little green.  
  
Faith stepped between her parents. She held out her hands, palms open and extended, one toward Rahl and the other toward Egremont, who leaned subtly backward and away from Faith’s touch.  
  
“Father, no!” Faith begged. “Don’t! Please, _please_ don’t!”  
  
Rahl began reasoning with her, a tide of words cataloguing Kahlan’s crimes and accusing her of blaming Faith for her own wicked deed of killing Nicholas, but Kahlan wasn’t listening.  
  
She did not care what Rahl did to her now. He had finally lost all power to harm her. Her soul was safe, just like Nicholas.  
  
 _She loves me_ , Kahlan’s heart sang. _Faith loves me._


End file.
